Green Victorians : The Simple Life in John Ruskin's Lake District / Vicky Albritton, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Albritton, Vicky, Author.

Jonsson, Fredrik Albritton, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ruskin, John, 1819-1900--Knowledge--Sustainable living.

Ruskin, John.

Ruskin, John, 1819-1900--Homes and haunts--England--Lake District.

Sustainable living--England--Lake District--History--19th century.

Sustainable living.

Alternative lifestyles--England--Lake District--History--19th century.

Alternative lifestyles.

Cottage industries--England--Lake District--History--19th century.

Cottage industries.

Consumption (Economics)--Moral and ethical aspects--England--History--19th century.

Consumption (Economics).

Lake District (England)--Social life and customs--19th century.

Lake District (England).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (216 pages.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2016]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

From Henry David Thoreau to Bill McKibben, critics and philosophers have long sought to demonstrate how a sufficient life-one without constant, environmentally damaging growth-might still be rich and satisfying. Yet one crucial episode in the history of sufficiency has been largely forgotten. Green Victorians tells the story of a circle of men and women in the English Lake District who attempted to create a new kind of economy, turning their backs on Victorian consumer society in order to live a life dependent not on material abundance and social prestige but on artful simplicity and the bonds of community. At the center of their social experiment was the charismatic art critic and political economist John Ruskin. Albritton and Albritton Jonsson show how Ruskin's followers turned his theory into practice in a series of ambitious local projects ranging from hand spinning and woodworking to gardening, archaeology, and pedagogy. This is a lively yet unsettling story, for there was a dark side to Ruskin's community as well-racist thinking, paternalism, and technophobia. Richly illustrated, Green Victorians breaks new ground, connecting the ideas and practices of Ruskin's utopian community with the problems of ethical consumption then and now.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Green Victorians

Chapter one. No Wealth but Life

Chapter two. Selling Suffi ciency

Chapter three. Queen Susan

Chapter four. Taming the Steam Dragon

Chapter five. Insatiable Imagination

Chapter six. Nothing Much

Conclusion. Ruskin in the Anthropocene

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226340043

022634004X

OCLC:

944187079